ECU joins NASA and Australian universities in lightning strike study to give South West firefighters an ‘edge’

A study into lightning strikes and the devastating bushfires they can cause could help give South West firefighters an edge in protecting the region. Edith Cowan University has teamed up with NASA and other Australian universities in a lightning strike study aimed at giving an edge to fire services across the State. It comes as multiple fires from lightning strikes raged in the South West earlier this month, including devastating bushfires in the Shannon National Park. The IGNIS Mission will observe lightning from the ground, air and space in an area from Perth to the Wheatbelt which is known for “dry lightning” which can ignite devastating bushfires. ECU executive dean of the school of engineering Paulo de Souza said the data collected from a successful study would be used by firefighters in areas prone to bushfires started by lightning. “That’s what we are trying to help,” he said. “There are particular types of lightning that we can distinguish, and one of them, which is this continuous current, is known to provide a lot of energy when it strikes. “It’s the one that you see the lightning. You tell a friend next to you ‘hey, look at that’. The friend has time to look and see the same lightning continue striking. “It lasts a little bit longer than others, and that lightning can get fire to start.” That fire, which could start as a small smoulder, could spread with changing conditions. Professor de Souza said the combination of three factors — high wind, high temperature and low humidity — created those fire spreading conditions. ECU will collaborate with five other universities from across the country as well as NASA to study the lightning events and subsequent fires. The project commences this year with phase one tracking thunderstorms and lightning with airborne flight campaigns to test the satellite instruments on Cessna aeroplanes from Bunbury to Esperance. In phase two next year, a satellite would be launched to collect data from low Earth orbit, and phase three in 2032 would be a deep space mission to Jupiter to better understand its atmosphere and lightning events, as well as a study into one of its moons to learn more about heat signatures.